Linden Museum: Hawai’i – Royal Islands in the Pacific

October 14, 2017 @ 12:00 am - May 13, 2018 @ 12:00 am

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Hawai’i at Linden Museum in Stuttgart

Royal Islands in the Pacific 14 October 2017 – 13 May 2018

The Linden-Museum’s exhibition “Hawai’i – Royal Islands in the Pacific” is the first major exhibition in Germany to focus on the culture and history of Native Hawai’ians. It spans nearly 250 years of Hawai’ian art from the time before the first contact with Europeans to today’s vibrant art scene.

It centers around four main topics:

– Cultural, political and natural history of the Hawaiian Islands – The European imagination and collection histories – Art and society of 18th and early to mid 19th century Hawaiʻi – Contemporary art and Native Hawaiian society and politics today

More than 200 important objects and works of art from the Linden-Museum’s collection and from other major German and European museums provide insight into traditional skills and technologies as well as religious and political aspects of early Hawaiʻi society. They also highlight the range of artistic principles and great technical expertise that characterize Native Hawai’ian art.

Hawaiian art forms as dance (hula) or tattooing (kakau) not only were important aesthetic expressions of the past, but are strongly connected to Native Hawaiian life and culture today – connections that special sections of the exhibition illuminate. Finally, ten contemporary works of art (photography, mixed media installations, and prints) by six renowned Native Hawai’ian artists elucidate current problems and positions on history and society in Hawai’i.